Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released today. This is true even when farming operations implement the best current marine fish farming practices.

University of Victoria marine ecologist Dr. John Volpe and his research team have developed the Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI), an unprecedented system for objectively measuring the environmental performance of fish farming.

"Scale is critical," says Volpe. "Over time, the industry has made strides in reducing the environmental impact per ton of fish, but this does not give a complete picture. Large-scale farming of salmon, for example, even under the best current practices, creates large-scale problems."

The fish farming industry is an increasingly important source of seafood, especially as many wild fisheries are in decline. Yet farming of many marine fish species has been criticized as causing ecological damage. For instance, the researchers found that the relatively new marine finfish aquaculture sector in China and other Asian countries lags in environmental performance.

Adds Volpe: "The fastest growing sector is Asia, where we found a troubling combination of poor environmental performance and rapidly increasing production."

With support from the Lenfest Ocean Program, Volpe and his team developed GAPI, which uses 10 different criteria to assess and score environmental impacts. Incorporating information such as the application of antibiotics and discharge of water pollutants, GAPI allows researchers to gauge which farmed species and countries of production have the best or worst environmental performance.

The researchers examined the environmental impact of marine fish farming per ton of fish produced and the cumulative environmental impact for each country producing a major farmed species.

"GAPI provides a valuable tool for developing environmentally responsible fish farming. Governments can use GAPI to inform policies and regulations to minimize the environmental footprint of fish farming. Farmers can use it to improve production practices. And buyers can use it to compare and select better, more environmentally friendly seafood options," says Chris Mann, senior officer and director of the Pew Environment Group's Aquaculture Standards Project, which collaborated on the work.

For further information on GAPI, including a summary of the methodology and findings, visit www.lenfestocean.org.

The GAPI 2010 report released today is based on 2007 data, the most recent year for which data for all aquaculture indicators are available. GAPI analysis will be updated periodically as additional data becomes available. For additional information, updated research and analysis, please see the GAPI website at www.gapi.ca.

The Lenfest Ocean Program supports scientific research aimed at forging solutions to the challenges facing the global marine environment. The program was established in 2004 by the Lenfest Foundation and is managed by the Pew Environment Group.

The University of Victoria is a national and international leader in the study of the oceans, with expertise as far-ranging as ocean-climate interactions, ocean observation systems, physical and chemical oceanography, marine ecology, coastal resource management and ocean engineering

Awudu Abdulai, chair of food economics at the University of Kiel, Germany, is FSE's Cargill visiting scholar from October 2010 - March 2011. While at Stanford he will be pursuing three research themes. The first looks at how farmers risk preferences influence their decisions to adopt water conservation technologies and how that impacts farm productivity. The second examines how social capital, property rights and tenure duration affect farmers' investment decisions on sustainable management practices. The third involves an analysis of the welfare impacts of cultivating export crops in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Kiel, Professor Abdulai taught at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETH) and also held visiting positions at the Departments of Economics at Yale University and Iowa State University, as well as the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC. Abdulai is originally from Ghana and his fields of interests span development economics, consumer economics and industrial organization.

THE POLICY FORUM BY J. D. GLOVER ET AL. ("INCREASED FOOD AND ecosystem security via perennial grains," 25 June, p. 1638) highlights environmental advantages of perennial relative to annual bioenergy crop systems but omits potentially important consequences related to hydrology and climate. They categorize greater perennial leaf area index and rooting depth (relative to annual crops) as "utiliz[ing] more precipitation," but the work cited provides no evidence for increased rainfall recycling.

The direct climate impact of land-use change associated with bioenergy expansion (such as a shift from annual to perennial cropping systems) has received little attention. The impacts of changing fundamental biogeophysical surface properties associated with bioenergy crops may have significant implications for local and regional climate. Changes to local hydrology caused by large-scale perennial systems may be complex, and thus require careful evaluation. For example, the drawdown of soil water and enhanced evapotranspiration from perennial relative to annual cropping systems could lead to long-term depletion of the soil-water column, as well as changes in clouds and rainfall in downwind locales. Quantifying local and remote consequences for hydrology and climate resulting from a shift from annual to perennial bioenergy crops is therefore required if longterm sustainability of biomass production is to be attained.

Steinfeld, head of the livestock sector analysis and policy branch of FAO, joined the FSE team in June as FSE's new visiting scholar for the summer. He has been working on agricultural and livestock policy for the last 15 years, in particular focusing on environmental issues, poverty and public health protection. Prior to that, he has worked in agricultural development projects in different African countries.

While at Stanford Steinfeld is exploring technical and policy options suited to reduce the environmental impact of livestock and associated food chains, at global and regional levels. Livestock are the world's largest user of agricultural land, they play a large role in carbon, nitrogen and water cycles, and are a major determinant of biodiversity. Technical and policy options will be grouped into a small number of "scenarios" that feature different assumptions about production modes and levels of consumption.  His work aims at providing broad strategic options for policy makers to address livestock's environmental consequences, but within a context of growth and development.

This Spring quarter, while our seminar series took a break, Terry Winograd and Joshua Cohen taught a new course at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school): Designing Liberation Technologies.

During this class, small interdisciplinary teams focus on a term-long design project, taking advantage of the design process structures and methods that have been developed in the d.school. This year's course developed as a collaboration between Stanford, the University of Nairobi and Nokia Africa Research Center.  The focus area was finding ICT solutions to the healthcare needs of people living in Kibera slum outside Nairobi.

Under the guidance of Jussi Impiö at Nokia and the Computer Science faculty, 27 students from the University of Nairobi Computer Science department conducted need finding studies at a number of health-related sites, including clinics, hospitals, community health workers, community leaders, and government offices. They read background materials, made observations, and talked with a wide variety of stakeholders. Their reports became the basis of the Stanford teams' initial understanding of users and needs. Communication with the group in Nairobi was also maintained throughout the course, using a Facebook group to facilitate discussions, as well as several teleconference sessions.

Working in small teams, 20 Stanford students from a wide range of disciplines worked over 10 weeks to develop initial design concepts to respond to some of the needs that had been identified. Click on the title of each project to view their final presentations:

• mNote: an online archive for community health worker notes. This application empowers community health workers by preserving the flexibility and control they appreciate in their current paper notebooks, but adding digital knowledge management capabilities.
• M-MAJI ("mobile water"): an electronic information system that allows people to use their mobile phones to identify clean water sources in their community. The application seeks to decrease the time and money spent searching for water, improve water quality, and foster vendor accountability by providing a mechanism for user feedback.
• Babybank: a dedicated savings plan designed specifically for pregnant women in the slums of Nairobi. By leveraging a popular cell phone payment system, M-Pesa, the application aims to make savings easier, so that expecting mothers can afford the services that will keep themselves and their babies healthy.
• Mazanick: an application to provide support and advice to pregnant women via SMS, with the aim of helping motivate them to attend prenatal appointments.
• PillCheck (Kifaa cha Tenbe): a mobile application to help people in Kibera find information on the availability and pricing of malaria drugs quickly.
• PatientMap :a system to make the waiting process in clinics more transparent, and to increase patient trust in the medical system.

This summer, two follow up trips are planned, with Nairobi students due to spend several weeks at Stanford, while a number of students from the Stanford group will visit Nairobi to explore possibilities for developing their projects further. Building on the success and lessons learnt so far, the Designing Liberation Technologies course will be open to a new set of students next academic year.